Every year the L.A. Auto Show organizers ask transportation designers to imagine how cars will look in the distant future. For 2009, the challenge focused on cars that will appeal to teenagers in 2...

Every year the L.A. Auto Show organizers ask transportation designers to imagine how cars will look in the distant future. The result is usually a half-realistic, half-Jetsonian view of future rolling, transforming and flying vehicles. For 2009, the challenge focused on cars that will appeal to teenagers in 2030. Designers imagined teenagers who were socially connected, technically savvy and, of course, easily distracted. In these out-there concepts, we found plenty of eyebrow-raising ideas,with some smart kernels of practicality. Here is a close look at six of the concepts.

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Audi eSpira

Any teenager has to love the rimless wheels and how this concept pays homage to old-school belly-tank racers. Audi envisions the eSpira as a thought-controlled car, one that "takes even the smallest body movements and gestures of the driver into consideration to provide an unsurpassed command of the drive." Thought-powered cars in 20 years? Sure, thought-control is a proven concept now, but to trust that we'll get that far beyond monkeys snagging bananas or slowly moving robots is undoubtedly a stretch.

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Audi eOra

The wheels tilt and the body leans, an attempt to "carve the roadscape with precision" like a downhill ski racer. The driver controls the car with body movements, which may be the perfect way for our increasingly sedentary society to burn a few extra calories

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GM OnStar Car Hero

In 20 years, teenagers will likely have fond memories of Guitar Hero and marketers will still be squeezing every last cent out of the storied brand. By 2030, GM hopes to take the game out of the living room and onto the streets--yes, actual driving is part of this video game. As drivers increase their skill, the car ups the challenge by removing wheels--until it's a unicycle. And while there's an autonomous system that jumps in before certain disaster strikes, we will fear those teenagers who decide to swap in Grand Theft Auto in mid-drive.

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Honda Helix

The Honda Helix doesn't just want to be your car, it wants to be you. Futuristic polymers that can change shape, Honda says, meld with the driver's DNA to produce a vehicle that does "not just function as transportation, but rather as an extension of the user, evolving in parallel with the user throughout his or her life." Trippy. In the process, the Helix can morph to different environments, from low-and-wide street racer to tall-and-thin urban crawler. While we commend the shape-shifting potential here, and we are happy to hear that Honda predicts the Singularity arriving in full force by 2030, we'd rather our Transformers remain aliens from a distant planet--it's just safer.

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Mazda Suoga

The Suoga concept is more about process than product. In 2030, Mazda designers envision a world where the automaker's new role is to facilitate customer's personal designs--think of it as democratizing car design. With the help of desktop 3D design software, customers will create their own car and Mazda will build it, all for an extremely friendly $2000 price tag. This is a great idea, and we have plenty of sketches ready to go, but we fear a lengthy wait-time. Can we just hit "print"?

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Nissan V2G

According to the folks at Nissan, by 2030 the electric car will have taken over and all roadways will also be part of an electric grid that will guide and power cars. Tomorrow's intelligent highways have much potential, but according to Nissan, they won't be here to last. The electric highway turns dystopian by 2030 when teenagers see untapped potential in the wildly popular V2G and hack into its electronics to take the cars off-grid. We expect Nissan's Mad Max-Meets-the Matrix post-apocalyptic trilogy to come to theaters soon.

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Toyota Link

Toyota has about the rosiest outlook for teenagers yet: The company envisions that 82 percent of them will be enrolled in college. And like every college student, these will want to hang with friends, but be constantly short of funds. So they can link up friends at transportation hubs and share the ride to the next destination. And since everyone seems to expect future teenagers to make their own cars, the Link has a fully adaptable body.

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